After deciding to participate in writing a gratitude post starting Nov.1 until Thanksgiving, I decided to have my family join along with me. I took a large Lincoln log container wrapped it in some Fall looking scrapbook paper with the words GRATITUDE, grabbed some small sheets of paper for writing on, put it in the center of the dinner table, and prepared to tell my family my ingenious idea.
The first person to notice the container and ask what it was for was the nine year old. I was quite excited to share my idea with him because of course I just thought it was brilliant. I explained that each night after dinner we would all put something in the container that we were thankful for and then at the end of the month we would read them all aloud. His response was ...... a little less than enthusiastic. His exact words were, "Oh great mom". This was not a happy, “Oh great mom!” it was more of a grumble as he put the container back on the middle of the table. Alright so the 9 year old wasn't oh so excited, he was 9. What more could I expect from a 9 year old? Kids are pretty self absorbed, right? My husband would surely jump on board and appreciate the values I was trying to instill in our children.
A few hours later, my husband came home and within a few minutes asked about the container on the table. He assumed the container said ATTITUDE and immediately thought it had to do with discipline. Then the 9 year old goes on to inform him of my "idea" in his less than excited tone. Okay, so no one is really thrilled about my idea and now I'm not so excited either. In fact, now I'm just annoyed because no one seems to think I'm as clever as I thought I was. But I was determined and so after dinner that night, I wrote on my strip and told everyone that I was thankful for my children. Even though they weren't thrilled, all of the boys followed along. They said what they were thankful for, wrote it on their strip, and put it in the box.
So this is how it went each night for the first week and a half. We would sit at dinner and write what we were thankful for. Sometimes we shared our gratitude out loud and other times we just wrote it down and put it in the box. Each night it seemed to get easier for us to find things we were thankful for and the kids seemed excited to share their writing.
I was feeling quite proud of myself for implementing this activity with my family. They were on the same page and now it seemed as if they looked forward to sharing their thankfulness. Even my husband was writing things like he was thankful for his wife's hard work, for his children, and for his job that provided for us. The kids were thankful for their family, god's word, their home, and the list went on.
But you know there is this funny thing about gratitude. It is easy to be thankful when things are going well, life is smooth sailing, and there are many things to put a smile on our face. And November just didn't turn out to be one of those easy months for our family. And so the "attitude" related to the gratitude began to reappear. But this time it wasn't coming from the expected sources......
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